


full circle

by verity



Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Hunters, BAMF Melissa McCall, Family Secrets, Female Relationships, Gen, McCall Family Feels, POV Melissa McCall
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-01
Updated: 2013-12-01
Packaged: 2018-01-02 03:31:08
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,664
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1052018
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/verity/pseuds/verity
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Your mom showed Scott a werewolf, did you know that?" Lydia says casually as they turn out of the subdivision onto the road that leads into the preserve. "I think that's kind of a shitty way to find out that you're from a family of werewolf hunters, especially when you've got a werewolf girlfriend."</p><p>"Let's talk again when you're a parent, honey," Melissa says. "You'll find out a lot about what you will and won't do."</p>
            </blockquote>





	full circle

**Author's Note:**

  * For [shetiger](https://archiveofourown.org/users/shetiger/gifts).



> thanks to apocryphal, Ashe, & Scout for the beta.

1.

Melissa knows it's not a good idea.

Alan Deaton asked her to come. "The Hale pack is expanding," he said. "You'll need a new treaty. The old one doesn't hold."

She wonders if Alan knows. She wonders, constantly, if Nate ever bragged about it in a bar, if—maybe everyone knows, knows that Melissa—she's the head of her family. She should have put Nate down before he ever lit a match.

But Nate was Scott's dad, so she waited. A little too long.

"We're moving _again_?" he says, sticking his head into the kitchen, where she's sitting at the breakfast bar with one hand still on the cordless phone. "Mom, that's not fair!"

Scott doesn't know what they are. 

 

2.

Laura Hale is dead by the time Melissa and Scott pull up to their new house.

"My condolences on your loss," Melissa says to Laura's brother when she runs into him in the supermarket.

"I don't want to talk to you," Derek Hale says. "There's nothing to talk about." Derek has grown out of the boy she remembers, into his big ears, his strong shoulders. He has a baby in a pink onesie strapped to his chest, smiling up at him while he stares Melissa down with a can of Chef Boyardee in his hand.

A woman rounds the corner into the aisle, a pound of butter in hand. She's dark-haired, petite—she looks nothing like a wolf. "Honey, how many times have I told you—" she says, plucking the ravioli from Derek's can. "This stuff is—"

"This is my wife, Paige," Derek says stiffly. "Paige, this is Melissa Delgado."

Paige smiles at Melissa, baring her white teeth. "We don't need your kind around here."

"That's funny," Melissa says. "I hear there's a new alpha in town, seems like you do."

Derek blinks up at her, just for a moment, and his eyes flash gold. "I can't help you," he says. "Sorry."

 

3.

"There's a new beta," Mama says, leading Melissa through the preserve. Mama's almost seventy, but she's still trim and spry, and Melissa has to hurry to keep up with her. She came into town last night unannounced, trunk full of the kind of weapons Melissa makes a living selling. "A girl. Look at the shoes."

"Not very practical for the forest," Melissa says, kneeling down to examine the footprints. Boots, with a heel that sunk deep into the soft earth. It's easy to see where she went off balance, the impression of her elbow in the ground. There's blood there, too, a little. 

And another set of footprints. Mama shines her flashlight over them, tracing their trail. "A beta with a friend."

 

4.

"I'm trying out for the lacrosse team!" Scott says over his bowl of Frosted Flakes in the morning. Melissa's already on her second cup of coffee. "Stiles—"

"Stiles in your chemistry class?" Melissa says.

Scott beams at her. "Yeah, that's right. He said he's trying out, too."

"Honey, are you sure about this?" Melissa puts her hand over Scott's, the one that's flat on the table for emphasis. "Your asthma—"

Mama, at the other end of the table, clears her throat. "This'll be good for Scott. He has to build up stamina, isn't that what the doctor said?"

By Scott's age, Melissa was running laps every morning before school, coming home to a mandatory hour of weapons training every day before she was allowed to start her homework. Scott's not like her, though. He's happy, innocent. Fragile. "If you really want—" she says reluctantly.

"I do," Scott says. "And there's this girl in English with me—Allison—"

"Oh, a _girl_ ," Mama says knowingly.

 

5.

"Mountain lions," Melissa says to the sheriff outside the video store. She was next door, buying lunch meat and orange juice, came out in the middle of the commotion to do damage control with the kids before the police got there. Scott's friend Stiles and his girlfriend seem sharp, not too gullible, but Melissa's a pro. She's pulled the old _gas leak_ and _cougar_ and _electrical fire_ so many times that she can swindle the canniest witnesses out of the truth of what they've seen. "I've heard you have a lot out here."

The sheriff cocks his head, looks over to Lydia and his son, huddled under blankets while they go through the usual EMT rigamarole. "Never seen one myself, born and raised here."

"Well," Melissa says, "there's a first time for everything."

 

6.

Scott and Allison are both having a rough time in chemistry, so Stiles volunteers to tutor them, Melissa invites the kids over. If they're under her roof, she can keep an eye on them. Mama thinks she's overprotective, but Mama once locked Melissa in a dark basement for 72 hours with bread and water before she pulled her out for an interrogation session. Melissa's the parent now: she gets to call the shots.

Melissa's going over the police report from the school bus murder when Stiles wanders in. "Hey, Ms. Delgado," he says politely. "Mind if I help myself to a glass of water?"

"Sure," she says, getting up to find him one.

When Melissa turns back toward Stiles, she could swear he's giving her the oddest _appraising_ look—but then it's gone. "Thanks," he says. "I'll—the fridge?"

"Help yourself," she says.

 

7.

Melissa drives out to see the old Hale house one time. There's nothing there, of course—the house was razed years ago. Cora stayed in New York, Peter's in a nursing home, and Derek and his high school sweetheart own a 3-bedroom 2-bath in the suburbs around the corner from Laura's house. And Allison's parents' house. Yeah, Melissa's not a big fan of that.

"You really like her, don't you, baby?" she says after she picks up Scott from lacrosse practice one afternoon, Allison waving goodbye as she walks toward her own car.

Scott nods. "She's just—I've never met anyone like her, Mom."

Allison's a national archery champion, best friends since childhood with Stiles and Lydia, usually looks like a Free People catalogue threw up on her. Melissa can't blame Scott—the girl's cute.

"You mind if I borrow the car tonight?" Scott asks. "She—I might have asked her on a date? To go bowling with Stiles and Lydia?"

"You _might_ have," Melissa says, tapping her fingers on the steering wheel. Scott has a driver's license, he's old enough to have his own car; they certainly have the money for it. She just—she can hear Mama's voice in the back of her head—she just has a hard time letting _go_. "Well, if you did, I think you could borrow the car."

"Okay," Scott says, flashing her a grin.

 

8.

Scott has a lot of school projects after that. Stays late at the library. Gets rides home from Stiles.

He's never made friends this easily before.

 

9.

Melissa stands at the back at the memorial a month after Laura's death, in the throng of townspeople who might have known her as kid or might just be here to gawk. She picks out a few familiar faces: Deucalion, Marin, Julia, Kali. Allison's sitting between her parents and an unfamiliar woman with blonde hair who's holding Derek and Paige's baby, while Derek and Paige take turns sharing stories that talk around the part where Laura was a wolf and Melissa's ex-husband burned her family alive.

The blonde woman turns out to be Kate Argent. 

Allison's aunt. 

Laura's wife.

 

10.

The morning after the full moon, Melissa and Mama get up early enough that the dew's still on the grass and go into the quiet forest.

"How many were in the pack, before?" Mama snaps a few photos of the fresh tracks on her phone, the flash flattening and washing them out on the screen.

"I don't know," Melissa says. God, she hates justifying herself to her mother. "They weren't—I left them alone, after the fire. Alan was here, I trusted—"

"You trusted an emissary," Mama says flatly.

Melissa squares her shoulders, steels herself. "I did."

Mama sighs. "There are four now," she says. "The Hale boy, his wife, Laura's, and the beta. You can see—"

"They were chasing the alpha," Melissa says, spotting the fifth set of prints ahead. Alpha prints are distinct, closer to animal: this is their mountain lion. "Chasing him? Or chasing _after_ him?"

"Hmm," Mama says.

 

11.

Melissa finds an empty box of condoms in Scott's room. There's a picture of Allison on his desktop background, smiling, laughing. Wolves can look human. They can—

She throws the box into the trash so hard it nearly tips over the can.

 

12.

Derek Hale disappears around the same time Mama starts going out late at night.

Scott comes home a few days later with tears dried on his face. "Mom—" he says.

"Scott?" Melissa says, taking him into her arms. How is he so big already? When did this happen? "What's wrong?"

Scott just shakes his head and buries his face in her neck. "I got a ticket for speeding," he mumbles after a while. "I'm sorry, I—I won't do it again—"

Melissa kisses his head. "It's okay, baby. You gotta learn that lesson sometime."

 

13\. 

"Help," Lydia says when she shows up on Melissa's doorstep. She's pale, dried blood from a jagged scrape on her neck dripping down her shoulder and staining her dress. "The alpha took Stiles, Ms. Delgado, he took—"

"Where's Scott?" Melissa says.

Lydia's 16, 5'2", wobbling on spike heels; her glare is a mirror of Mama's, like she's staring straight at Melissa's soul. "He and Allison went after the alpha. The alpha took _Stiles_ , he—"

It takes Lydia three tries to hack into Stiles's Apple account, thirty seconds to pull up the coordinates for his phone and plug them into Google Maps. "That's the old Hale house," she says, puzzled. "There's nothing there now except—"

"The basement will still be there," Melissa says, getting up to go to the gun safe.

 

14.

Nate didn't have to use any seduction or trickery to get into the Hale house. The Delgados have been hunters for centuries, came up from Mexico into California back when it was still a territory and passage was easy; they'd been allies with the Hales since Mama's Mama was a girl, and Nate and Peter went to school together. Nate stopped in Beacon Hills while Melissa and Scott went on to Santa Rosa to meet up with Mama, "to borrow some books," he said. The house went up in flames the next day.

Mama took care of Nate a few months later. As far as Scott knows, Nate's just a deadbeat dad.

 

15.

The back seat of Lydia's Volkswagen is full of Molotov cocktails. "We'll take my car," Melissa says, but she lets Lydia bring her ammunition along. Christ, these kids.

It's not that Melissa's childhood was innocent. Maybe this is what it would have been like, if she'd had a friend.

"Your mom showed Scott a werewolf, did you know that?" Lydia says casually as they turn out of the subdivision onto the road that leads into the preserve. "I think that's kind of a shitty way to find out that you're from a family of werewolf hunters, especially when you've got a werewolf girlfriend."

"Let's talk again when you're a parent, honey," Melissa says. "You'll find out a lot about what you will and won't do."

Lydia's quiet after that.

The clearing where the Hale house was still looks like just that, the same void that fooled Melissa the first time because she didn't want to look any deeper. She checks the holstered Browning on her hip, the backup holstered under her shoulder. "Bring what you need," she says to Lydia, and watches while Lydia deliberately loads a padded bag with her artillery.

Deeper in the woods, there's a second entrance to the basement, at the end of a tunnel that should have served as an escape hatch. Melissa toes through the line of mountain ash around the two doors set into the ground before she pulls them open, fingers catching on the rough wood. Her sneakers are soft on the dirt covering the stairs; she leaves her flashlight clipped to her belt. They can't expect to get the jump on werewolves, but there's no reason to make it easy for anyone.

 

16.

There are four beta werewolves circled around Mama and Stiles, and an alpha with his claws at Scott's throat. Kate and Allison are shifted; Derek and Paige still look human. "Come on in," Peter Hale says, his face smooth and handsome again. "We've been waiting for you to join us."

" _Lydia_?" Stiles chokes out; Mama smacks him.

Peter rolls his eyes. "Your mother's always kept to Code—I didn't think it would be fair to start with her. And your son's so soft, so gullible. Didn't want him to turn out like dear old Dad, Melissa?"

"Mom," Scott says, a trickle of blood at his throat already. "Mom, tell him—"

There's no point in denying it when Peter can hear every lie. "No," Melissa says, forcing herself to meet Peter's eyes. "He was a monster, he—do you think I'd _let_ our family—?"

"You let this one live," Peter says. "I can fix that mist—"

Lydia lobs a bomb over Melissa's shoulder and Melissa goes for her gun.

Lydia didn't aim for Peter or Scott, but the pile of scrap wood behind them that must be where the roof of the basement caved in. It goes up like tinder, startles Peter into loosening his hold on Scott, which is all the room Melissa needs. She puts a clip into Peter, advancing, while Mama starts herding everyone toward the exit. "Go," Melissa shouts over the ruckus. "I'll finish this."

"Not alone," says Paige, beside her.

 

17.

Outside, the winter night is cool, and Scott huddles up to Melissa, Stiles to Lydia, while the werewolves circle around Paige and Mama frowns at her cell phone. "The reception out here is terrible," she mutters.

Paige's betas kneel at her feet. She's the shortest of the pack, and even bent low, Derek's head comes up past her waist. Paige cups his cheek tenderly with one hand, "Derek," she says as her eyes flash red, "Do you take me as your alpha?"

"Yes," Derek says, baring his neck in submission. "Always."

Melissa can't watch after that. It's too intimate, too personal. She looks up at Scott and says, "I'm sorry."

"Is it true, what you said about Dad?" Scott says.

She nods.

"Okay," her son says, holding her tighter. "I—okay."

Mama finally dims her phone and shoves it into her pocket. "I'll call in the fire when we get out," she says to Melissa. "Better to be on the safe side."

"Yeah," Melissa agrees.

Derek comes over to them after the werewolves have finished their alpha welcoming ceremony, Allison trailing behind him. "Thank you, for—" he says to Mama.

"You were excellent bait," Mama says, batting her eyelashes at him like Derek isn't married to the alpha werewolf ten yards away and Mama isn't three times his age. "My pleasure."

Beside them, Allison approaches Scott warily. "Scott."

Scott steps out of Melissa's embrace. " _Allison_ ," he says.

 

18.

Sheriff Stilinski is waiting by Melissa's parked car on the edge of the Preserve. "Someone saw smoke out in the preserve," he says. "You know anything about that?"

Melissa opens her mouth, gearing up for another lie, when Paige's hand on her shoulder brings her to a halt. "We've taken care of the problem," Paige says. "But someone should check out the fire, just to be on the safe side."

A tiny baby howl comes from the sheriff's cruiser, and the sheriff tosses Paige his keys. "Mountain lions, huh?" he says, glancing over Melissa's shoulder.

"First time for everything," she says, and turns to watch the wolves spill out of the forest behind them.

**Author's Note:**

> I'm [ladyofthelog](http://ladyofthelog.tumblr.com) on tumblr.


End file.
